Justice
by notcrindy
Summary: The Pines twins have encountered monsters before, but this one is unusually small.


"Look, there it is!"

"_Where?_" Dipper was prepared for his twin sister's enthusiasm, but he wasn't prepared for her arms shoving him to the side to get a better look. To her credit, she murmured "sorry" right after, with her elbow in his face.

"_Mabel_—"

"Sorry," she said again, an afterthought. Then came the dramatic gasps. "_There?_"

"Yup, that's it, all right." Her elbow was still in his face. Pretty soon he was going to be tasting lint balls, pieces of sweater stuck to his tongue. Still, Dipper tried to stifle his irritation; he was lucky someone was always willing to tag along with him on these excursions at all.

That was good, because this one was _important._ Sure, all of them had been important to some degree, but this one involved more missing children than usual. Frankly, any missing children at all should've been more than _usual,_ but in a town like Gravity Falls…

…well, either way, Dipper would have to be the one to fix it. He knew it was dangerous to pursue something like this, being a child himself, but the adults were as useless as ever. Children's faces plastered on the back of every milk carton, places riddled with posters of peers and desperate pleas, but the local law enforcement were way in over their heads with this one.

Actually, they were way over their heads with _most_ things.

They'd done their best between them (he guessed), but it was difficult not to wonder what that even meant. The whole town was growing restless with it, enforcing new curfews and keeping closer tabs. Members of Wendy's family were among those missing, so she'd taken some time off. Even Stan was worried underneath all the gruff (didn't help that profits were suffering), which meant that their summer vacation was getting to be kind of boring.

There were secrets to be found within the Shack itself, of course, but only so many. Too many of the stories in these walls were about Grunkle Stan's armpit hair or what Soos found under the couch. It was easy to get restless when so many of them were content to just sit around and watch TV all day. He'd seen too many Ducktective reruns for his sanity, at this point.

(I mean, really, how many story lines could a show about a crime-solving duck _possibly_ pull off before things got stale? He quit after the episode where its protagonist jumped over a shark, on the grounds that sharks didn't even live in ponds.)

Strangely enough, that was when it hit him.

Maybe standing up and loudly announcing it to the whole room hadn't been the best idea, in hindsight. It was natural to worry about someone when the only dramatic thing they could think to say was something like, "That's _it!_ I have to be like _Ducktective!_"

But he'd seen so many in a row. And anyway, that was enough to get Mabel on-board.

Just as he'd suspected, no one had dug deep enough. There were things people weren't talking about. Most of the kids were still missing, yeah, but there were a few who had made it back.

As to be expected, a lot of them weren't talking, but some had come back with stories. These were the cases Dipper was interested in. Had he been anywhere else, or anyone else, he could've expected something almost normal. He knew better than that, though, and every story formed a new piece of the puzzle. Everything confirmed that this wasn't your run-of-the-mill abduction—this was _supernatural._

In the beginning he expected something maybe like aliens, which would account for the sudden reappearances. It would have explained why so many of the surviving children were found wandering, unable to explain how they'd found their way back home. But digging deeper he found no tales of spaceships, no lying in bed only to be ripped from it, nothing that suggested alien activity even remotely.

Instead, they brought back monsters.

None of them had any wounds, not a scratch on them, but they talked about amounts of bloodshed with which no kid should have been familiar. They talked about death. Every single one of them gave the same account of roars, of something large and looming and undoubtedly _inhuman._ Every single one of them talked about fangs dripping with blood, which would have been enough to make any other pair of kids' stomachs drop.

But they were the _Mystery Twins, _and nothing was too much for them so far.

"Dipper, look." Mabel was usually more enthusiastic than this. When he saw the drawing in her hand, he'd understood why. At first glance, it was an innocent child's drawing, all Crayola and smiling faces, but the stains on the page suggested something more sinister.

And dried.

It was so off-putting that he'd had barely any room to focus on the actual content of the drawing. He was a boy who had seen more than definitely anyone else his age, and he had faced countless dangerous situations, but things like that would make anyone's stomach churn. Both of them just sat there for a long while, and then he'd taken a deep breath, and he'd kept going.

Enough to find a very specific location.

He might've turned back, if not for that find. After all, he'd had vaguer things to go off of than this. This was almost a cakewalk, as far as monster-hunting was concerned. He wasn't even discouraged when he looked through the journal and found nothing that seemed relevant; it wasn't like they hadn't gone in blind before.

"Uh, hey, Dipping Sauce," Mabel had said awkwardly, peering over his shoulder as he looked through. "You know I'm behind you all the way, _right?_ But—"

"Who's the new crush this time?" His mind was somewhere else.

"What? No, it's nothing like _that_ this time, I swear!" She couldn't stop herself from flipping her hair back a little for dramatic effect. "Besides, even if it _was,_ I'd just tell you you're jealous 'cuz I'm so _charming!_"

Cue the dorkiest laugh in the world, right on time. It was all Dipper could do to keep from rolling his eyes. He had a very special connection with his sister, obviously, but there were some things he could just never understand. "Uh-huh."

He had more important things to tend to, anyway. He was chewing on a pencil and flipping through the journal with one hand, trying to see if he'd missed something. His mosquito bites itched.

"But it's not _about_ that," she protested, invading his personal space as much as possible. "It's just that… …well."

She looked uncomfortable enough that he'd stopped, looking up at her. "What is it?"

She was even wringing her hands. "Look, Dipper, I know we're the Mystery Twins and all, and that's _great._ But isn't this a little dark, even for us?"

"Dark?" He raised an eyebrow. "Mabel, I was possessed a little while ago by a demonic triangle. I think we've been in dark territory for awhile now."

"Yeah, I know," she conceded. It didn't seem to make her feel any better. "But don't you think that maybe, there are some mysteries better solved by… …I dunno, _not_ us? Like, actual adults?"

It had occurred to him, he wanted to say. He wanted to be defensive about it, as he always was when someone was suggesting that he was in over his head or that things were best left to authority figures he couldn't rely upon. He wanted to be angry, and assert that he could do this, he really could.

He saw the real fear in her eyes and tried to soften his approach.

"Well, maybe," he tried. "But Mabel, listen to me. Look at me."

She did. He put his hands on her shoulders in an attempt to be reassuring.

"We've _tried._ We've tried to rely on the adults in this town _so many times,_ and where does it ever get us? The police force is ineffective, no one ever listens even when we produce_ hard evidence,_ and we always wind up handling this stuff alone _regardless,_ you know?"

She was quiet for a moment, which was surprising in and of itself. "Well, what about Grunkle Stan? He knows! We could tell him, and—"

"And what? You've heard him. You've seen him the past few weeks! He doesn't want us to go looking for trouble. He wouldn't help us."

"Well, maybe that means we _shouldn't—_"

"Mabel, I know it's scary. And it's okay if you don't go with me." He took a deep breath. "I get it. But you've gotta understand I'm going to do this anyway."

"But why? Why, Dipper? Why can't you just sit and watch Ducktective like a _normal_ person? You want to be just like him, you said so yourself! Besides, there's a marathon starting later tonight and it's gonna be _sooooo—_"

He was losing her already. "There's _always a marathon on!_ Which, frankly, is kind of concerning by itself, more because I'm not sure who can watch that same plot over and over while maintaining their ability to think."

"Well, it's clear somebody doesn't think it's all it's _quacked up_ to be!" There came the quacking, and more dorky laughter to follow it.

"Mabel!" He still had a hold on her shoulders, but now she was trying to _thwap_ her sweater arms in his face. "Mabel, this is _important!_ You _know_ it is, so stop trying to change the subject and hitting me in the face."

That got her to refocus. "I know. I just—"

"I know. Believe me, I know." Dipper's voice was serious. "I know it seems stupid to take this one on, when it targets kids just like us. I know that if I were anyone else, I'd just go to the police or whatever, okay? But this isn't like that. If I don't do this, no one will. And then what'll happen?"

She was quiet again.

"At the rate kids keep vanishing, this'll never stop. It's not going to just go away. I know that's not what you wanna hear, but I have to find these things."

She'd been quiet for way too long now. He felt unsettled.

"Before they find us."

It took a moment, but she hugged him. Mabel's hugs—not awkward sibling pats—were a force to be reckoned with, but he appreciated the gesture anyway, even as he felt what might have been his spine popping.

"Okay," she said, simply, once she was done.

"…Okay?" He was cautious.

"Yeah." Her smile was all braces, but it was genuine. "You heard what I said before! I'm behind you all the way, bro-bro. Ducktective lasts for twenty minutes without commercials, but family should last forever."

He smiled back and tried not to roll his eyes again. "Thanks, Mabel."

"No problem! So where's this monster again?"

That was how they'd gotten to this place, rowing out to this island with Mabel's elbow still in his face. It was a nice, sunny day, but Dipper didn't let that lure him into a false sense of security. The more-than-foreboding building on the island ruined that feeling anyhow.

"Are you ready for this?" Dipper took a shaky glance toward his sibling.

"I think so," she murmured. "Yeah! Let's go kick some monster _butt,_ like always!"

"Yeah!"

Neither of them felt it, and the feeling was dissipating the closer they got to the island. It wasn't like in any of the monster movies either of them had ever known; where normally fog would cloud everything, there was nothing but a bright sun shining down. Where normally things would be dark and ominous, here they were so colorful it almost hurt, offset only by the barbed wires and grey of the building smack dab in the middle.

Still, Mabel crowed "Land _hoooooo!_" as soon as they hit the shore.

Dipper was just surprised and relieved that nothing had come out of the water to wreck their boat, or the island itself hadn't sprung to life before them. That was a good start, right? Automatically, they gripped hands.

"This is an abandoned prison," Dipper whispered. It was best to try to make sure they knew the territory before they went in. "Built in 1933, or something like that. Was once the most fearsome prison in the U.S. They used to do tours here, but they don't anymore."

"Why?"

"_No one knows._ There have been a lot of ghost sightings here in the past."

Mabel laughed, almost nervously. "Hey, _that's_ nothing we can't handle! I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts!"

He appreciated that she was trying to lighten the mood, but he just drew a deep breath. This was more serious than a ghost. "Every single one of those kids who's ever made it back has talked about this exact location, without fail. I think it's pretty safe to say that our monster is in there." He rubbed his chin, trying to think things through even while terrified. "But how are we going to get in?"

"_…Grappling hook!_"

"How do you _always_ have that thing on hand?"

…Actually, looking back on it, he had no idea how they even got in. Either way, she would always claim that's what it was, and he knew it.

There was no denying he was already immensely spooked, and she was too, but they looked at each other and kept going. Whether it was the place that did that, or they were pressing on of their own will, he couldn't say. But he kept a tight grip on her hand, and was prepared to defend her if he had to. He tried to take stock in their surroundings.

It should've been dark, really dark. Really old. Really abandoned. But it wasn't. Everything was bright and easy to navigate. Sort of surreal. He thought, almost, he could hear roller coasters rocketing off in the distance but that couldn't have been right…

"Aw, this place isn't so bad! Look, there's a rainbow and everything!"

"Don't be fooled," Dipper gripped her hand even tighter, almost reflexively. He knew how she felt about rainbows. And bright things. For all he knew, this was how kids got lured in here. "And keep your eyes peeled for clues, okay? There shouldn't even _be_ rainbows in here."

"You got it, Dip." True to her nature, she was cheerful for the both of them. "Do you need me to help _break the dramatic tension?_ Should I get Bear-O?"

"No," Dipper snapped as quickly as possible. "_No_ Bear-O!"

"You _suuuuuuuuuuure?_" She was waving him right in her face.

He sighed. "Yes, I'm sure. Look, Mabel, I know you're just trying to make both of us feel better, but Bear-O isn't the way to go—"

He paused. "Wait a minute. How do you even _have_ Bear-O?"

"Now that you mention it," she said, "I have no _idea!_"

Something else was dawning upon Dipper as he looked at her. He did a double-take to be sure. "Uh, also, when did you knit that sweater?"

"Pff, you know my bunny sweater, Dipper, I've been knitting this for—" Her scream when she looked down confirmed that neither of them had seen it before. It was a purple thing, and there seemed to be some kind of creature on it. "Holy_ heck,_ what happened to my sweater?"

She seemed to calm down almost instantly, eerily, giving it a closer look.

"I don't know, Mabel, but we can't be distracted now." He was more uncertain than ever, but he couldn't let it show. This was probably just a distraction tactic to keep them off-guard and throw them off the trail of the monster, the downfall of so many kids before them, and he couldn't let that happen. "We have to keep going." He tried to, still holding her hand, but she wasn't budging.

"Dipper," she said, her voice calm. "Wait."

"No, we have to keep moving, we can't let this place get to us, we have to stick together—"

"This is the monster from the picture," she said, as casually as possible.

"…It is?" He stopped trying to move and backed up. He'd barely paid attention to that picture before, but now it seemed that was a bad move on his part.

"Pretty sure," she nodded slowly. "Look what's in the pocket."

Another picture, just as spattered with blood. This blood fresh.

They both stared at it, blinking. She screamed first, then he followed suit. He ran first, pulling her frantically with him, not sure where to go. Not sure what to do, not sure of anything, just find the kids get out find the monster get out he wouldn't let her be a target for —

Something stopped him dead in his tracks. She was still trying to run, but he stopped her too, trying to calm her down. "No. Shh. Do you… …do you hear that?"

It was the sound of laughter.

A child's laughter, innocent and echoing and bouncing off of every corner in this place. They both stood still, listening, before someone moved. Someone small, the source of the laughter, smaller still than either of them.

To be honest, the only thing either of them could focus on was that he was also covered in blood.

They started, but Mabel was the one to squeeze his hand before he started screaming again. Maybe this boy needed their help. Maybe he was a victim of this, and if so it wasn't fair to him to get all worked up. They had to be the bigger kids and lead him out of there. Maybe, Dipper thought, he could lead them to the others.

"Uh, hey there, buddy," Dipper tried, awkwardly. He had trouble relating to kids his own age, much less kids this small. And potentially traumatized.

Mabel seemed confident, though. "Step aside, Dipper," and she let go of his hand. "I got this."

Clearly trying to ignore the blood, she kneeled down to the little boy's level. "Hi, there! I'm Mabel." And just like that, to Dipper's horror, Bear-O was back out. If anything it was going to make everything worse, but it was like watching a train wreck. There was no stopping it now. "'And I'm Bear-O! We're _bearry_ glad you can find humor in this terrible situation!'"

Any minute now, this kid was going to burst into tears.

"_Mabel, NO—_"

Except he didn't. In fact, he seemed even _more_ delighted, clapping his hands now. "Hi, Mabel! I'm Warden. Your bear is funny."

Well, the kid had a terrible name and he'd probably been through a terrible trauma. Anything was funny after encounters with gruesome, hellish beasts, right? She still smirked back at him, almost smug.

"'We're… …uh, _bearry_ glad you think so, Warden!'" At the mention of his name, the kid was positively beaming. His grin had a gap in it, one missing tooth, and it seemed familiar. "'We just want you to know that we're big kids, and we've come to help you! Big kids and a bear.'"

She jerked a thumb back at her brother. "But we just call him Dipper," she whispered badly, in a normal voice. She winked while he sighed impatiently and felt too anxious. They didn't have time for this. They still had to figure out how they were going to get out of here, and if there were others, and what exactly this monster was. It had to have a weakness.

Warden laughed again. "It's funny, because he's not a bear at all!"

"See, Dipper? _Someone_ appreciates my sense of humor."

"Yeah, that's nice," he tried to make an effort in front of the kid, "but we need to know some things. We're here to save you from this monster, and unless we get rid of it and get out of here I'm pretty sure—"

"_Dipper!_ Don't scare him." Mabel chastised, before turning her attention back to the boy. "He's right, though. Have you run into any super spooky scary monsters lately?"

"_Super_ spooky scary monsters? Sure!" The kid was still smiling.

And covered in blood.

Something didn't add up.

"Well, I know you're prob'ly scared," Mabel was still moving the puppet's mouth, even though she was speaking as herself. "But you don't need to be anymore! Are there other little boys and girls, or is it just you?"

"Well, right now, it's you, too!"

"That's _true,_ but um—wow, you really think Bear-O is funny, huh?"

"Yes," said the boy. The day was just getting better and better.

"Mabel, come _on—_"

"But I'm not scared!"

"That's very brave," said Mabel, sincerely.

"_Good little boys_ don't need to be scared of Manglefang!"

At this, Dipper instantly perked up, all but rushing up to the boy.

"Manglefang? That's the monster?"

Maybe he could figure out, just from the name alone. There had to have been legends, or something he could reference that back to, to figure out its weaknesses. If he could even just get its solid appearance, that'd be something to go off of, wouldn't it?

Warden laughed again, but it felt different in a way that made the hairs on the back of Dipper's neck stand up. He ignored it for the sake of learning about this thing—after all, this kid had probably seen a lot. "Of course! You've never heard of _Manglefang?_ You must've been a good little boy until now."

It was sad, really, that this kid thought he'd been taken by this monster because he was a bad one. Not really the current problem, though. His family could take care of that, wherever they were. For now, he just had to gather as much information as he could before it got to them—and tried to get them, too. "Yeah, I guess, so do you know anything about what it looks like? We need to get rid of it as soon as possible so that—"

A picture whooshed conveniently right by Dipper's feet. Same bloodstains, same crayon drawings. This time something compelled him to pick it up and really give it a good look, and he studied it as carefully as he could in a short amount of time. This time, the monster from Mabel's sweater stood out so immediately, covered with purple fur and yellow-and-red-fanged and blue-horned. The name "MANGLEFANG" clearly stood out, too, in awkward and crooked lettering.

And sitting there, atop the monster, was…

"Oh," Dipper breathed out loud, dumbly. "_That's_ why that gap looked familiar."

It all matched up. The purple cap, crudely drawn on top of the figure's head, was present on this boy's head too. The weird yellow-orange glasses, flecked with bodily fluids, were what the figure in the drawing was wearing. Same purple overalls, same yellow undershirt, and the smile was punctuated by that same gap.

"What are you talking about?" Mabel leaned in to whisper.

"Mabel," he tried to whisper back while smiling, "that's the boy from the pictures."

A beat.

"…_Ohhh._"

The boy didn't seem all perturbed that they'd happened upon them, oblivious to why it would be even a little unsettling, but he was pretty young. "That's right," he chirruped with pride. "That's _me!_ I drew those. Do you like 'em?"

"Sure," Mabel managed to spit out the words first. "Say, uh, Warren—"

"_Warden!_ …Like in a jail." He was raging, and then serene, all in the span of a second.

"…Oh, right!" Mabel blinked as if this were just occurring to her, but it was just occurring to Dipper, too. "I get it, now! Haha, that's pretty good. Uh, Warden, about this monster. You said good little boys don't have to be afraid. You like him, right?"

"Oh, yes! He's always been my favorite, since Papa told me."

"So what does that make us? And all those other kids?" She chuckled nervously. "I mean, I gotta say I think I've been a _pretty_ good girl this year, I made you laugh a lot with our pal Bear-O here, and Dipper's pretty good too. We came here to rescue you, even when you didn't need it, so—"

"Oh, Mabel," Warden sang, and his eyes were all lit up behind the glasses in a way that a little boy's shouldn't have been. Dipper was trying to find it in him to take her hand and RUN, get out of there, RUN right now, he would take any kind of brainless TV over this, and couldn't move. "That's not enough to be good! If you are in jail, then you deserve to feel the swift hand of a Justice. That's what Papa always said, and I _know_ it's right."

"Then wouldn't _you?_" Dipper knew, as soon as the words were out, that he shouldn't have said them.

He watched as the boy went from confused to angry, and then as righteous as someone so small could look. "Nope! I'm good, and they've all been bad. I am the warden, so I _know._"

It was right then that something began to shift. Suddenly, they weren't in the jail anymore. Purple grass sprouted underfoot. The sky was hazy and heavy with violet and blue clouds. The sun, as if in on some cruel joke, actually _smiled. _

"Justice gobbles you up!"

The monster rose from the depths, right underneath the child, who sat atop it just like in the pictures. "'cuz I'm _big_ and _strong,_ and Manglefang and I fix _EVERYTHING._"

There was a roar and a flash of fangs. Dipper held Mabel's hand.


End file.
